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After a few minutes with Andrew Slack, creator and Executive Director of The Harry Potter Alliance, you become convinced he’s on to a winning formula. Since 2009 The Harry Potter Alliance has functioned as Dumbledore’s Army for our world, engaging fans from across the globe in doing social good.

When asked about how non-profits and social entrepreneurs can get better at engaging with their customers, his eyes light up and hands fly in the air. “This is one of the most important themes that non-profits should be debating,” he says, offering insights on how to engage with customers in a creative way via stories from mainstream culture.

Start with the people, not the message

“At the Harry Potter Alliance we are getting Harry Potter fans to get involved. It's an untapped population. If we (as non-profits) are not thinking about communities and potential customers in this way, we are not thinking creatively enough,” Slack says.

Organizations like the Harry Potter Alliance are born with the tools of this day and age. Thus, they are also wired completely around their customers — as opposed to cause-based organizations that are trying desperately to get attention from their own trenches.

The difference is startling when looking at the success and the response The Harry Potter Alliance got in a recent online giving challenge. “When we were competing in the Chase Giving Challenge, we came in first place out of 10,000 organizations. Afterwards, some non-profits were complaining, saying, ‘They are getting Harry Potter fans to get involved. That's not fair.’ Well, that is sort of the idea,” says Slack with a shrug.

Use social media authentically

One of the ways the Harry Potter Alliance has leveraged its community is through social media, which makes listening and engaging with new customers easier and cheaper than ever before.

“There's nothing mystifying about social media. Yes, there are metrics that we can look at and best practices that we should study, but at the end of the day, social media is just that: Social. It's asking questions; it's being real, being authentic and honest, and it's not being overtly professional and serious,” Slack says. Being authentic is as key to Slack as the notion of having fun and enjoying telling an engaging story with others.

Use a popular narrative to reach people’s hearts

Slack says to find a message that potential customers care about, and play with that. His mantra is simple: “Let us authentically connect with the minds, hearts and needs of the people that are going to be making our movement happen. It is not a crazy concept, it is not a radical concept, and it is the simplest idea possible!”

The how-to’s are for Slack just as straightforward as the formula: “Think about the messages that resonate with what you care about. Think about what's out there right now that your potential customers care about, and try to play with that.” Using a narrative is the most potent way of activating people, according to Slack. “It is incredibly exciting to watch people's eyes light up and see how excited they are to make a difference when you give them the opportunity to be the heroes they have always dreamt of.”

Use the Three P’s

“To me, the secret to success in any entrepreneurial venture - social or business - are the three P's: Patience, Persistence and Pizazz,” Slack says. “You need to have a nice balance of all three. And I think unfortunately a lot of non-profits have a lot of patience and a lot of persistence, but they lack pizazz in a very, very serious way.”

Take a cue from companies, Slack suggests: “Companies that are successful, like Coca Cola, they have pizazz coming out of their ears. But all they are selling is soda.”

To Slack, pizazz is not just a matter of better marketing. It is a way of connecting creatively with people. “We need to realize that there are answers and solutions to how we can connect to our audience that we have not thought of yet,” he says. ”That is a very authentic process; it is an honest process, and there are no simple answers there is just wrestling with the question and having fun with that question.”